 Thanks for having me. We don't normally as organizers speak, but sometimes things happen in the end. You know, it's awesome. So this talk is inspired by one of my favorite people on the planet, Alex J. Vasquez. He is my mentor in a very hand solo kind of Obi-Wan way. Because I've had very brief yet impactful moments with him, just like Luke Skywalker did. But that's not my presentation. Let's talk about time tracking. How many people in here actually track their time? Ooh, that's not about hands. Okay, so here's the thing. I came from construction accounting, and I was in construction accounting for a long, long time. We do something called job costing. And basically it's an autopsy that if nobody reads, they have no idea what the cause of death was. So a lot of times it's a method of accounting that allows you to see if a job was profitable or not. And a lot of people do it out of habit, but really to do job costing well, you would need to be in another talk. And you would need to actually look at the results of that data and then change your estimating behavior. But so today what I want to talk about is learning things the wrong way. So one of my alternate taglines is I do things the hard way so you don't have to. So I was doing some side work while I was being an office manager and a social media person for a contractor. And so one of my friends who was a roofer said, I need a Twitter person. I'm like, sure, 250 a month. What do you think of that? 250 a month, quick cash, extra money. So then I then Bridget the office manager was like, hmm, how much money are you making on this 250 a month? So I started tracking my time in an average day to handle a Twitter account. Well, I spent at least an hour cumulatively. And by the way, if you do social media, okay, 100% against charging for the hour, but you need to understand your hourly time commitment in order to know what your cost is. So I said, well, 250, hmm, time is 20 divided by hmm. So I kind of figured out that I was making minimum wage. And that is not okay. I mean, it's okay. But it's not like I'm going to do that and do something way less stressful than a Twitter account for a roofer, right? So you have to figure this out. Like, sure, 250 a month sounds great until you realize how much time you're spending on it. Then it's minimum wage. It's $9 an hour basically. So I was going to talk by the now famous Alex Vasquez. And he said, you have to know that you're valuable, right? I think it was another situation where somebody dropped down and you just get in there and he's like, I don't really think that I said this, but like I typed it as he said, so we're going with it. We price for the service. We price for the value we give, not our time. And I 100% agree with this. But if you don't know how much you cost, you don't know if you're charging in the red or the black. And we don't want red because then your bank will not be happy with you at all. So let's talk a little bit about value. When we consider what we bring to the world or what we're doing, we can say, oh, this person did this website and it was this price and I'm doing something better. So then it's that price. Well, then that's just price anchoring like Nathan Allante talked about yesterday. I was like, it's so funny. Just caveat when you're reading people's names on Twitter, you don't know how they're pronunciated. You know what I mean? That guy just missed pronunciation on purpose. So I didn't know if it was Nathan Allante. Like I saw his talk in Seattle last year. I thought it was Nathan Allante. Look at that Nathan Allante guy. That's a little different. So value is super subjective. I volunteered for a work camp in Orange County last year. And then I decided to price out just for fun. What if Orange County was my client? How much would that be? Well, the market value was $5,000. If I didn't give them $5,000, so it's super subjective. And if I were working at an advertising agency, that number would be higher. If I were owning a business and my bill, the time was higher. That would be even higher. So value is a very ethereal word that sometimes is difficult. It always is difficult to make tangible value. So instead we assign value, whether it's appreciation or an in-kind partnership or friendship. Sometimes relationships break down between people because they don't feel valued. Normally it means because they don't feel heard. They don't feel validated. That's not a money thing. So value, that's tricky. And when you use value as your determining factor, people are often asking for return on investment, which in accounting terms is a complete misnomer because an expense is not an investment. Therefore there's no return on it. It's an expense. An investment is something you put in like a venture capitalist and then you expect to make money back on it. An investment is putting money in the bank with a certificate of deposit and getting a rate back. An expense, a business expense is never an investment. So that's that. So let's talk about cost. Cost you know about. Cost is in your bank deposits. Cost is when you know, and I just want to say, I'm not on my high horse. I had $7 in cash to my knee yesterday. Like nobody's perfect in this room. So don't think, oh I'm not as awesome as she is. That you are. You're awesome in your own ways. But this is what I've been doing for a long, long time, right? So aside from having those kinds of goals, if you don't really understand how much you cost, then charging $25 an hour sounds awesome. $25 an hour as an employee is completely different as $25 an hour as a freelancer. As an employee, that's like $52,000 a year. As a freelancer, well, we're going to kind of get into that. So cost is what actually happens in the bank, on FreshBooks, in Quicken, in your checkbook register. That's what cost is. It's money you're paying out. So if you don't know what your money is paying out, just build a Google Sheet. That Google Sheet is awesome. So what's the difference between value and cost? Profits. And unless you want to join Peace Corps or whatever, that's fine. Like I'm a capitalist. I'm not ashamed of it. I want to make money. I am not an employee for that exact reason. I finally started my own business in October because I want to be free to make as much money as I want. Right. And I don't want to sell my time. So I completely, completely am against selling your time unless it's for a very, very high price. But when you're an employee, you're selling your time. You get a lot of benefit from that. It's a pro-con thing. If you'd been in Jen's talk, you would have heard her talking about maybe you're not cut out for it. I have no problem being a remote worker because I'm super disciplined. I won't even go party with my friends until all my homework's done. Okay, so where do you cost? I wrote a blog post about this, so boom. I'm spending $25 a month on hosting. $20 a month on post-mag. $10 a month on Dropbox. $10 a month on Backblaze. I'm cloud storage. HootSuite, $15. FreshBooks, $25. Canva, $15. There's all those things. I went through my QuickBooks, my Quick-In, I use Quick-In for my computers for my real life and FreshBooks for my business life. But I just went through and looked at all my sass. This is the cost. This is what goes out. No matter what comes in, this is money that goes out. That doesn't include the cable for the internet and my cell phone bills because I work on my cell phone. Electricity. You need electricity for the internet and your computer. And the amount I'm allowed to deduct from my home office from the IRS consult your CPA. I'm not accounting or giving accounting or legal advice. So, without doing anything, breathing air, not even being super critical, not adding my car, not adding mileage or my car payment or car insurance. I'm not eating in this cost. There's nothing else happening. I'm at $710. This is going out. This money is going out like the Mississippi River no matter what happens, right? But then, don't I get to get paid if I'm in my own business? Where's my pay? Well, I'll sign health insurance, which is like $400 a month until I get older and then it keeps going up or whatever. That's another talk. And so I'm going to work 40 hours a week. I want to make $75 now. This is just a basic amount. I charge $150 when I do consulting, so it's reasonable for my company to charge myself. Self? What would you like to make? About $75. Okay, that's $3,000 a month, right? So, that's good. Take on pay. It's not take on pay. So, now I'm at $4100. I haven't got any income yet. It's just all going out. I'm averaging over here. Like somebody sent a card fast. So, I haven't even talked about my taxes. Taxes are real, you know? Like, you know, that's a thing. When you're self-employed then you have to pay self-employment taxes. You get $1099. That's taxable income. So, it's like somewhere between 20%, 15%, whatever. In California, probably like at the 50% title level, or who knows. We'll figure it out when I file my taxes in February. So, then you're going to ask yourself, how much profit do you want to make? Right? So, I know that it costs me $4,000 to be alive and human in my business. Breathing oxygen on this plant, paying, that's not even like, I'm not even telling you about my rent. That's just normal cost, basic. Okay? So, figure out what profit you want to make. What income do you want to be at? Because what's super cool about having your own businesses, if I'm going to work 16 hours a day, I can do it. If I'm going to work four hours a day, I can move to Serbia and do it. You know? I mean, like, I could be a little large in Belgrade right now and I am so thinking about it because I speak a little Serbian so... Okay, so take your desired salary and reverse engineering taxes. You can do that. This is what I do. So, I knew I was making when I was at my job and the take-home, okay? I used the take-home because the take-home is what goes in your bank, right? So, figure out what your take-home is and so now I'm going to expose myself and be super naked in front of everybody. Ready? So, previously I was making 3,500. Net, net, net, take-home. That's take-home, okay? Don't base anything off of gross. That's not real life. That's not real money going. That's only for... Gross is only matters for taxes. Think about what you're really living on. But what I really need is 45 because originally my husband was alive and I was getting another $1,000 so I knew that I needed that amount. So then, you can use formulas in your Google Sheet Excel or whatever. Notice 1, 2, 3 if you're still in school like that. And then reverse engineer your taxes. So, for example, if you charge $100 an hour, 20% of that is self-employment. So now you're down to 80. Now, then you're going to have to pay income taxes and whatever like that. So, if you want to be super conservative, I would use 20, 25%. I know that for me, I'm in the 15% of tax bracket-wise from the history of my tax returns. But that's not real life. That's after adjusted income and blah, blah, blah, whatever. For me, I'd rather... My goal is... My goal... And I say goal because I haven't done this yet but I do have an account with the Long Beach fellow credit users. It's going to happen. I'm going to be rat-holing this money away so that I am ready for the tax. It's not in trouble with the franchise tax board if they're in California. If you're not in California, you have different rules and stuff like that. But you know what I'm saying? $100 is not $100. $100 is 80 if you're working in California with your self-employment taxes because nobody's paying social security for you. And again, this is an estimate. I'm not a CPA. I'm not getting any tax advice. I'm not an attorney. So many disclaimers. But this talk needs to happen. How many people are blown away by this? Okay. How many people are like, yeah, Virginia did this every day? Okay. So that's good. That's enough. I feel good about that. I don't want you to be blown away by a little bit of eyes opening here. So yeah, I need $9,000 available to make what I want, which is 49, right? So that means I'm about 67% of the way and that's why I have a part-time job. So it's okay. My business had like half my clients. You know what? I wasn't making it. Do I quit? No, because I'm saying yes to myself. Yes to myself. Go get a part-time job. So I can do all this work on the weekend whenever I want, because it's all I need is Wi-Fi and the intermittent. That's what's so great about being in the WordPress community, being able to work online is that you have so much freedom, not just with your physical space, but where you live, how you want to live, what you want to do. You have to decide what your own constructs are and then make those roles and then live by them. But you still have to be disciplined in whichever way that you choose, right? So I was a remote worker and then I had a fork in my life. Forks are a big thing, not just for software. You have a choice. You're looking down two roads, you know, diverged in the Yellowwood and being one traveler along my street and look down one as far as I could until it bent into the undergrowth. So Robert Frost was talking about projecting, you know, whether it's financial projection or projection based upon behavior or for me, the reason why I wanted to be a remote worker is because my husband was very ill and knew I needed to be home, not driving Santa Ana 27 miles away sitting on the five. You know, I figured out that in 14 years of working in Santa Ana from data point, I lost three years of my life. Yeah, don't do math unless you want to look in the face and just like, the thing with math, this is what I love about math. Math tells you the truth. Don't be afraid of it. Just let it guide you. And so I said, you know what? I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I'm wasting so much of my life and I'm never going to get back. And so I worked 16-hour days doing side work until I had my career and I worked for an advertising agency in October. I started my own business and I knew what the market would support and so I started doing my pricing, not 250, 1200. Right? So you have to, you can put your prices out there and you can fiddle with them and you can experiment. You know why? Because your website's in WordPress. It's simply easy to change numbers. It doesn't matter. The only thing that I learned, this is not really part of this talk, but I will tell you anyway, I learned the hard way already. Something from construction which I should have put in my proposals. Estimates good for 30 days. Because I got stuck in some pricing I gave away in February. Anyway, I'm super good at learning the hard way. So that's my tip for you. Okay, so then another way you can skin this cat is dividing your cost by 40 hours, marking it by 25% and then when you estimate your time for a job this website will take me, this account will take me this amount of time and listen, nobody has time to track your time all day long. You can put a thing on your computer, whatever. It doesn't know when you went to the bathroom. You got around this stuff up. You don't need to be like, you know, justin.tv having something filming around all the time just to let you know what you're doing. Just take an average job and just say okay, I'm gonna see how much time I'm spending today. And then extrapolate it out. Like, that's what's so great about math. You know, you don't have to be counting every day but you should have some kind of general idea of what you're doing or you can just write it down. Like, I have a paper calendar on my desk and I write stuff down. Oh, I had a call with this person in 1.5 hours. Hmm, maybe I need to add in meetings to this price. Next estimate does not include meetings or includes two hours of client consultation. Right? So you can learn through this iteration is something you learn in software development. Iteration is something you learn in life. Change, adapt, grow, evolve. You're not stuck. You have choices. It's your business. You can do whatever you want. Or as I say, you're a grown-ass adult. So when I do this, the cost is 4,100 divided by 40 is 102 dollars. That's 102 dollars an hour if I work 40 hours a week. I'm willing to work more. But this is my goal. I don't really want to work more than 40 hours a week. Do you want to work more than 40 hours a week? Who in here wants to work more than 40 hours a week? Who wants to work less than 40 hours a week? Who wants to go to Tahiti? Bali? Thailand? Yugoslavia? Oh, sorry, Serbia? Paris? Croatia? South Africa? You know what I'm saying? You want freedom. This is why you have a job you do on a computer that only uses the internet. You can buy a little thing that lets you have the internet too. It's so amazing. We're living in my childhood dream, the Jetsons. Video chat. To ad nauseam. We have Slack. We have so many ways to communicate with each other. We can do our work wherever we want. But you need to know how much you cost yourself. So, now that's the baseline. That's your baseline. Your cost is your baseline value. So I should never charge anything less than $128 an hour. When I'm making up my proposals, right? Based upon this math. I don't like hypotheticals. I don't think they're useful. So, sorry, that's what I did. Whatever you guys think of me, you can find that. Twitter at YouTube can be guru. No eggs. I won't let you have 16 characters. So, the thing is, that's just the base. So, when I do hourly consulting, I charge $150. And I know that we pay and PayPal are going to take their 2.9% and 30 cents. Factor that in. You know, if you're like, don't get all mad that you only got $143. Figure it out. We have the internet. We have math. It's 2.9% and 30 cents or something like that. Round it up to 3% and put it in your pricing. This is what the whole world does. The consumer pays for everything. No business pays for anything. Unless you're not pricing it correctly, don't do that. And if you did it before, that's fine. Just change it. So, for me, my biggest client was before I changed my price to $1,200. So, I changed their invoice to say $1,200 with a line item that's a discount of negative $200 for legacy pricing. It's marketing. Psychology and math is marketing. So, it's more than one way to find your value. You can reverse engineer things. You can fiddle around. You can test it out. You know, you don't want to watch the water boil either. Like, nobody's going to sit out looking at Google Analytics and go, Oh, good. Somebody else came from Russia. This is super exciting. Okay, so I may have done that. One of my favorite things to do on Google Analytics is live right now. Like, oh my gosh, there's a new one. But 20 days a day is like a revival for me. So, I want to know who's going to start a Google sheet on Monday. That's not enough hands. I'm going to tweet all of you guys. I know your channels. I don't. So, that's basically what I want you to understand. I hope that nobody in this room is charging under $100 an hour. And you don't have to tell your client what that is. But when you estimate your job, if you think, okay, this website is going to take five hours, okay? So, that's $500. But what if you're using B from Builder? Now it's six. What if you have hosting? Now it's six and $25 or $30 or $100. So, now it's $700. Where's your profit in there? So, now it's $8.67 because that's like a Walmart strategy. The other thing I do is I'm prepaid. I don't do any work until I get paid. So, that's another thing you can do because once you release that product, it's there in the sky. You know what I mean? So, but when you're in your brain, you gotta go, okay, so sometimes I do lost leaders, right? So, sometimes I go, I know I can't make money on this, but I can get a new customer. So, I really want this for $50. But if I do this for $25 and I get $15 of those, then I'll get some more people because as my late husband's grandpa used to say in the Depression, a fast nickel means a slow dime. Hey, this is true. I'm telling you, like every time I go on Twitter and say, well, if you want a plan of a plan, I'll do it for this price, only until this day. Boom, DM, DM, DM, DM, DM, you know what I mean? So, but I know what my cost is. I can make that decision because I'm a grown ass adult. It's my business. Somebody told me once when I gave my proposal, oh, I don't think you should discount me that much. I go, you don't get to tell me what to do. If I want to give you 50% off, I can give you 50%. It's my business. I make the decisions. He goes, okay, okay, I'll pay it. You know, but that's the thing. We wanted this freedom. We wanted it for a reason, right? So, I don't like to take questions now. Yes, sir. How do you normally factor in your deductions for your business? How do I normally factor my deductions? I know what my cost is. It costs me this much money. That's my net. That's how I factored in. So, I factored in how much it is. So, that's when my hourly rate is. I'm sorry. I meant at the end of your tax returns. Because I know you get deductions for investing in your business. Oh, yeah. Well, like I said, I'm not a tax attorney. I know that you can fill out a schedule, whatever. I just go to h&rblock.com and I do what they say. Oh, my question is, do you normally take those into considerations when you figure out your costs? No, because that's a refund. I'm talking about money that's going in and out of your bank today. Because if you do that, you're going to be screwed because what if they change the rules? Or what if you don't have a receipt? Or what if now you're getting audited because you're taking yourself out to lunch not Alex Vasquez out to lunch and talking about web development and then you didn't write it down? You know, it depends on how conservative you are with your deductions. So, for me, I'm going to be super conservative. I'd rather have money back, for sure. And I'd rather have more money in my bank account. And that is because I have known people with the history of IRS problems, including my late husband, who went into business with somebody who factored the receivables. Never factored the receivables. That's selling your customers money that they owe you for a price. And then he had a couple bank accounts and he stole $350,000 because he wasn't depositing the payroll checks. The payroll taxes. You know what I'm saying? You can factor that in. You don't have to do what I say. This is a guide. My thing to you is if you want to factor that in, factor that in. But if you're wrong, you don't have the money in April. Well, it depends on if you're a corporation. But yeah, I mean, and really, I think we're all supposed to be filing quarterly, but I haven't started doing that yet. Don't wrap me out. Just a follow-up. How did you personally manage your end of the year deductions? Is there like a system you follow? I started my business in October. She hasn't had a year. I haven't had a year of being Bridget Willard.com yet. But I have a lot of years of doing accounting. She works with a tax professional. I figure it out for her. I go to hnrblock.com and I do what they say. So when I did it last year, they said that's a hobby. It's not enough income to count. And that's what my CPA said before. So I'm just going to fill out whatever they do. I'd rather have the money than not have the money. I'm going to be in trouble in April if I don't have that money. But yeah, I'm going to deduct as much as I can. I know because I looked it up that I can deduct $350 off my rent because it's about the square footage and stuff. But I'm adding that cost in there because that's a cost to me even if I'm not paying it out. So it depends on how conservative you want to be. Sorry, I hate it in a pence. Maybe hit me up on Twitter in February because that's what I'm going to do in Texas. Have you ever had any pushback from clients when you say you want to prepay for them? Oh, if they don't like it, they're not going to be my client. So for me, I do social media posting and blogging. Not so much blogging. I really want them to hire Chen. I hate it, right? But I will do some... I don't make money at it. You've got to know what you make money at. I don't pump them out like that. She's a machine. She has a whole infrastructure. Okay? Not a paid promotion. But that's something like, you know who your resources are. I make money doing Twitter. I make money doing Twitter for WordPress businesses because I know the community. I know exactly who the audience is. And I hitched out, right? But I started doing an account for somebody outside of it. And I sent the invoice to Eulix. I'm going on a vacation in Puerto Vallarta tomorrow. And she's like, well, I'm not going to pay this debt. I'm like, you can pay it whatever you want, but my work's done. Right? But if they don't pay it, I don't do the work. I stop. And that's how we work. Advertising agency. And those are my terms. And I put it on my proposal. Prepaid monthly. No refunds, full or partial months. I'm not responding to you because I did the work. You don't like the work, no, my problem. Because for me, the way I do it is I deliver a spreadsheet twice a month with content that's written. They approve it. And then I schedule it. So no. No refunds, full or partial months, prepaid. So the invoice, I do nothing until that invoice is paid. When FreshBooks emails me, then I start working. Otherwise I don't care. It's not real. You know what? This is a whole counting chickens before they hatch thing. I've done that too much emotionally. I said it tweet out the other day. It's like dating and client acquisition takes an unsustainable amount of hope and optimism. And those are two things that I've been doing for like a year, right? So you can think somebody's a lead, but they're only a lead when they pay. It doesn't matter. You can keep everybody as like in your bubble and keep them active, all those matches. And then, but they don't talk to you. It's not really happening, is it? It only matters if you actually go on a date. It only matters if they actually pay. It doesn't mean you have to comply with the math. I would just say, you know what? Maybe it's not a good match. I did that on the first date too. He said, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, whatever. And then it was super awkward. And I was like, this guy's killing me. He's so boring. I want to kill myself. So I went to the bathroom and I texted one of my friends and I said, just end it. Just say goodbye. I'm like, that's rude. That doesn't fit my brand, right? Because I'm a marketer. So I went back and I said, you know what? You're a really good person. I like you. But there is nothing happening here. And so, cheers for trying. I got my, got my glass. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, oh, we could have been at Netflix like the rest of the world not even trying to date. But we're the break ones. And he was like, yeah, we are. And so, he wanted to get some, you know? That's a Kodakai, whatever. Kais. Okay. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, you can end things well. It doesn't, we don't have to be a match. I don't have to work with you. You don't have to work with me. It's just okay. But don't, don't say no to yourself by making, by like throwing some number out of the sky like the magic Karinik or Karniki or whatever. What? Karnak. Karnak. Thank you. Magic Karnak. You're just saying, oh, I'll do that for $450. And you're like, oh my God, there's so many emails at 11 o'clock at night. Do we have any more masapakutas? Yes, ma'am. Can you please give that prepaid lingo again? Oh, my prepaid lingo is, I have the scope and I say prepaid monthly for full or partial months. No refunds. It's in the terms part. I love fish books so hard. It's the easiest thing. Oh, I will tell you what not to do really quick just on that. So don't make an estimate. Don't convert an estimate into an invoice while you're still on the phone with the client. Oh, my God. Sometimes being efficient is a bad thing. She's like, could you send me an invoice? I'm like, you're welcome. She goes, what are you doing? I'm like, no. I'm just thinking about now. I'm going to get it done now as a secretary for 30 years. I can get stuff done. I find it very off-putting. I'm like, okay, well, you can pay it whenever you want to. My work is done. I'm happy to answer any questions about whatever. Yes, Joseph. I mean, you kind of answered this already, but there's, I will always have the issue with scope creep. You mentioned scope with your contract, but sometimes scope creep is one of those things that sort of just creeps up on you and before you know it, it's like 25% of the project. Okay, scope creep. Yeah. How do you keep scope creep from all these times? That's literally happening to me right now. That's literally happening to me right now. It wasn't my question. I'm sorry. That was kind of creepy. I love puns so hard. So what do you about scope creep? Okay, so recognize the signs. So I made, because I was in construction, I made my proposal very clear. $350 for posting on Instagram, content and captions to be supplied by others. Right? Three to four posts per week, prepaid monthly for full or partial months. No refunds, right? And so all of a sudden, she's emailing me all the time with somebody else and then I'm like, okay, so I have some options. I could be, you know, on my phone, oh my gosh, something, something, something, while I'm drinking tequila with my friends or I can say, you know what? This is not acceptable. I'm going to let anybody else, I'm going to let anybody else do that. So why would I let this client do that? Isn't that okay? And after cussing in several languages all around my apartment, I said, you know what, Napoleon did, maybe it's a bad example, but I liked that he didn't deal with stuff, right? You never answer anything when somebody's mad. You do not email somebody when they're mad. Don't email somebody when you're mad. So there's like a biofeedback thing and when my hair starts getting mad, whose hair gets mad? Is it just me y'all kidding me? When my hair is like, oh, I'm so mad, like, oh, I never take, you know, like, you're just like, oh, I can't even right now. I just so like, oh, I can feel it in my, like just even mimicking it, I can feel it in my face, my chest is constricting. Do not, do not open your computer. So I calmed down and then I came back to myself. It was inefficient, which is my worst quality. I like to be efficient. I waited until 9 a.m. and I went point by point and answered her concerns. And I said, thank you for the derivative. I'll be happy to email you between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. I'll do it all weekend long. This can be 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. So she sends me emails now and she goes, you don't have to reply right now. Like, that's fine for her. She wants to be up at 10, 11, 1 o'clock in the morning working. She has her own business. She can do what she wants. She's a grown-ass adult too, right? But I choose what I do. It's my business and I am not responding and she can't make me. She doesn't want it. She can quit me. Guess what? Four partial months, baby. No refunds. I don't care. I'll pay her to not be my client if that's a problem. I'm not living my life that way. That's why I'm not somebody's employee anymore. It's not okay to just count. You know, and then I have a part-time job and I don't get paid when I'm there, but I noticed their website was down. So that's part of my brand is I can choose to reach out to the website company and say there is some kind of DNS help happening right now. And they ask for a password and yes, I'm one of those people. It emails it and I don't care. And so we did it and it got fixed and that's fine. And I was here at work camp and I wasn't getting paid for it. That's fine. I chose to do that. That's my choice. You don't get to tell me what to do. And when you realize you don't have to do it, you have the power that they can find somebody else who's like 300 people who do this work right here right now. Does that answer your question? It did. That was the answer. That was the answer. I have questions that that is even more controversial. I was expecting like an FHG and a bonfire. Which accounting services do you use? I use freshbooks.com. I use quick in on my house computer from my just pull sound chase, you know? And like whatever, I pretty much pay attention to it. But whatever cash flow is a whole other talk. Like really, you should have more money. You're going to stop spending it on tequila. That's another question. Yes ma'am. Do you still have the roofer guy and did you figure out a way to raise rates? I do not have him. So this is a thing like when I know, right? So he just one of those people that said this isn't working. I tried it. And that's fine. So like I said, one of the clients I have is on a lower rate, not that rate. But what I started doing when I raised my rates is showing them on their invoice that they're getting a discount for legacy pricing. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a person or as a giant brand, whether you're a web host or somebody with licenses is to be you have grandfather pricing and then going back on it. Because that's not returning loyalty to your customers. That is a huge marketing problem, a huge branding problem. And you have to decide to live with yourself. So, you know, you can break up somebody if you want. You can say, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. But let me help you find somebody else. That's actually how I got my Instagram client. I kind of know why I know. But like, thanks for the heads up, lady. So that's what happens. It's like you, it's about integrity. I want to look at myself in the mirror in the morning and be like, no, that was what I didn't do. They agreed to that. And so did I. If I made a mistake, that's not their problem. I made the mistake. Those are my boundaries, instead of properly whether it's pricing or responding to text messages at 10 o'clock at night. And then I just complain about it on Snapchat. Don't complain about it on Twitter. Just complain about it to your friends in person. No, seriously. Like, you need to talk to your friends, but do not client shame on Twitter. We have 10 more minutes, so we have time for questions. Are there any other services or like online programs or anything that you suggest to use for your consulting business or for marketing your business? Oh, yeah. Well, I have a list of sas kind of right here. So I use, I use managed hosting festivals, sorry, Matt, but they are my client. Postmatic is a comment delivery plugin. They, so like when I sit by my blogs, I don't need to do MailChimp because just emails into them. I'm not doing a bunch of work. It's just me. It's no like millions. Dropbox, I love so hard. I love Dropbox so hard. All my website backups go there. My phone backs up to Google photos, Dropbox, and to Apple photos. So all the time. And for Dropbox, it's so great with clients. It's really easy to share files that way, but I pay for the whatever basically unlimited amount of storage. Backlays is for backing up my computers, the actual machines. And it's $10 for, doesn't matter how many computers you have. iTunes, I do their cloud storage also because I want, if something happens to my phone, I do, I work on this a lot. So, because I'm doing Twitter and Facebook for clients, so I need my phone. I check it all my waking hours, you know? Unless I'm in a conversation with somebody and I'm not doing that, that's rude. So I want to be able to just get another iPhone and have everything on it. Hootsuite is a social media management tool for clients. It's free up to three accounts, but what I like about Hootsuite is when you add lists to it, oh my gosh, that's a whole other talk, bridgeabilo.com slash Twitter lists. Twitter lists will save your life. That's another talk. But Hootsuite lets you put your lists in there and then it's the same on a desktop or on the web app or whatever you call it when you use the internet on your computer. I think, whatever, when you go to the URL, hootsuite.com and you log in, it's the same as the app on your phone. And I love that because it's, and I also can do old school retweets, which if you've seen the retweets for work at Los Angeles, I use that to do that. FreshBooks. FreshBooks, I love FreshBooks so much. It's made my life completely easy. Canada.com is for making graphics because, you know, I'm not a graphic designer. I don't even know how to use Adobe Photo, Illustrator, whatever, or InDesign or anything like that. And I'm not going to, if I had to do that, I need to hire somebody else as a vendor. But if I just need a blog graphic that's 1200 by 628 from my own website, then it's done, whatever. I'm thinking about getting the paid version of Calendly, which is another service idler from JetMiller.com over here. Oh, do you have JetMiller.com? No. You should. JetMiller.com? Okay. JetMiller over here for me. Someone to blog.com. Anyway, so she uses a lot of those kinds of things, but Calendly is a scheduling tool because I have clients in lots of different time zones, including, you know, India, Europe, whatever, someone wants to video chat with you and I have to block out my time on that, my part-time job. So they can just look and see what you're available and schedule in. It's a lot easier than going back and forth. How long Thursday? Oh, I can't do this. Thursday. I still have to be driving. How long Thursday? I can't do that. I'm going to be at PTA. Well, how about, like, that stuff is time-waste. I don't have time for that crap. You know, nobody has time for that crap. Any more questions? Alex. Hi, I'm Alex. Hi, Alex. So that was a fantastic talk. Thank you. So how do you handle conversations with folks, colleagues, people who know who you are, their friends or, you know, just people who do similar lines of work in their, like, hey, Bridget, I'd love to work with you. You know, since we're such good friends, you know, what about a discount? Like, how do you gracefully handle those conversations? How do you gracefully handle discount requests for your friends? So your friends should want to pay your full prices. I'm just going to say that. But I have friends that I do that for. And I offer the price. One of my clients discontinued for a while, and I said, I don't like this. I mean, we made a trial agreement. So I said, what if you do this for three months? You don't like it. You walk away with still friends. It's great, right? And then snow hard feelings, right? So everybody has to make their own business decisions. And some people are like, you know what? I believe in you. I really want to help you out. So I have my published prices for the Gen Pop, right? So it's my business. I can do this. So what I did was I said, I finally emailed them. I go, it breaks my heart that you're not doing this. Let's talk about a price point that works for you. Because I believe in your product, and I want it to help you. I offer to get at the discount. It's severely discounted. But I believe in that person. I believe in his business. And I believe in the product. And I'm going as far as my business. I can do whatever I want. But if somebody asks, oh, I really want to do this. But I need 50% off. I'm like, I don't know. I can shop in my pencil. But I don't know. I need to come back. Because that's what they say in construction. Go shop in your pencil. It's such a weird, weird company. Whatever. So I'm going to shop in my pencil. I'm going to tell them, I just can't do that. Because sometimes when you're at the beginning of your career, people say, how do I get clients? A lot of times you're doing it as a loss leader or for free. To get exposure. Like you can't pay for remand with exposure. But that referral base matters. And you can decide, this person is my friend. They want help. But really, so there's two sides to it, Alex. Your friend should pay you full price. But also, you can work out a deal. I have agency prices that I don't publish. Because, for example, if you want me to do something, it's not going to be the prices on my website. Because I don't have to deal with the clients. So you get a different price. It's not going to be on the internet. Because you should mark it up. I believe in markup. You know what I mean? So I think that when you handle the conversations by being honest, it's managing expectations. So, well, I really want you to do your $1,200 level. But I want you to do it for four. I'm like, I can't do that. But if you're really hurting, you can make that financial decision, too. And you can do it with a time. Like, what if we did that for three months? And then we evaluate it. Then you can decide. You know, it depends. But if somebody's like really having you, you can tell to pick a finger and then tend to choose from. In a nice way, of course. Because you wouldn't do that. Because you're a professional. But it's funnier. And we're tired. It's a bird camp. So I can take one more question. Jamal? Do you have a system or a schedule on how you use your 40 hours a week? Do I have a schedule on how I use my time, my designated 40 hours? Three days full time and then all the way? Oh, no. So I'm just so routine oriented. I basically work 8 to 5. I mean, when I wake up in the morning, I look at Twitter and drink my coffee. And then I do that at night. But when I do my work work, I know myself. My best hours, the most productive hours I have are between 9 and 3. And I learned that from a long time ago doing office work. So I was a little nervous about giving a accounting at 3.30. Because even with all this sleep in the world, which is why I skipped after-party yesterday, this is not my best time to talk about numbers. Like, I don't do math in my head. All of a sudden, I didn't tune my algebra for 10 years. I'm super stupid. So knowing yourself, right? But I get a second win at 7.30 p.m. So if I need to do more work, I'll come home. I work at my desk in my living room. I do not work in my bedroom unless I am super exhausted. That is a work-life balancing and another talk. But I work from 8 to 5 every day. And my friends say, when are you going to work? I am working. Well, so that's my bigger problem. So, like, a better question is how do you tell your friends to or stay at home with moms or have regular jobs so you can't go to lunch with them during the week? You know, I had that problem. It's a real problem with my friendship because they don't get it. And I said, listen, I'm going to stay this tune away to kind of stem. I can go to lunch with you on Saturday. That's when people go to three-hour lunches. I am working. But you work from home. Still working. Yeah. It's my job. Well, that's not a real job. Yeah, it is. It's a real job. It's really paying the rent. It's for real. And there's my cost. I just told you what they are. You want to pay me? Let's do it. I'll sit for lunch. Thank you.